April 2020

Let's take a quite break for the monthly update since we've completed our Brazil trip blog entry. You will read this in the middle of May, and I am writing this in the beginning of May as I didn't want to interrupt the Brazil blog flow. After this monthly summary, I plan to continue out the next travel blog entry, which is my trip to Osaka and Kyoto in 2019 September! I've almost done organising and editing the photos, so hopefully I can start this weekend and end it by the Hari Raya long weekend! 

So the whole month of April was an interesting one. Circuit Break was introduced to Singapore, and in a way, it helped me achieve my monthly goal of eating home cooked food for a month as Singapore government banned all eating out till 1-Jun due to the spread of Covid-19. As a result, I cooked almost daily, and ate a very healthy diet! But more of that later as I would like to cover item 2 and 3 first. 

I was supposed to attend One OK Rock's concert in Singapore on 9-May, but they cancelled all of their tour after touring in Australia in March. It was a shame as I was looking forward to it. But the good news is, they release 6 concern on Youtube streaming, and oh what joy I had watching them. To date, I've watched the first 3 concern. The first was super awesome. The second I had watched it before when it premiere on live stream. The third started out as kind of a bore, but half way through, it turned into a wild and super fun concern. I watched all 3 concerns, alone, in my room, with Marcus and my Soul headphone on. I can't stop singing along, moving to the beat, and laughing at the dumb things they do on stage. Probably my favourite band to watch live! And the wonderful thing is, every live concern, there are different arrangement to their music, so it's never dull. I hope I can watch them again live soon!

Apart from concert, the art world has been rather generous by releasing a lot of free plays online too. To date I've watched Emily of Emerald Hill (Again!),  Supervision, Love Never Dies (I don't know why I've never seen this play before, it was amazing!), Circus De Soleil Aqua Version, and the latest Frankenstein played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Wow, I felt so cultured after watching the last one. It made me feel in love with literature again, especially the scene where the Creature recites Paradise Lost. 

Apart from watching youtube and also internet TV, I've also been busy cooking up almost every meal since the Circuit Break started. It wasn't that hard on me really, cause I really enjoyed planning the meal, cooking them, photographing them and eating them. My instagram  account was filled up almost on a daily basis, especially since there were so many long weekends in May where I can do continuos cooking. So here are all the post I did since the start of this year. I started the account to document all my home meals, and it has been an amazing journey so far! 

To make the account more interesting, I try to challenge myself by cooking something different. Meaning to say, if I have posted a certain dish before, I am not supposed to post it again. This indirectly motivates me to cook new dishes almost on a daily basis! And it has been amazing what I can cook up by just watching a youtube video, or searching a recipe online etc. 

As I can't really go grocery shopping or marketing on an adhoc basis, I really needed to plan out the dishes before attempting them. Worst was, due to the Circuit Break, many people were hoarding food and I couldn't find some of the ingredient that I wanted. So as a result, the meals I cooked were kinda basic and easy to make dishes. Mainly they were bread base, noodle base, rice base. Usually they were western style, or Japanese style, or simple Chinese style. I couldn't really cook peranakan dishes, or Penang dishes as that would require me to go to the wet market to buy the various ingredient for it. Maybe once all these virus is over, the dishes can become more exotic. But for now, they are all simple and pre-mixed dishes. 

I also fell in love with baking, and try to bake on every weekend. I've gotten so good at it that I had to control myself from finishing up all the bread I make in one day! I realise that I love semi-raw bread that is soft and fluffy! They are as light as air! Each time I  bake, I try to make a variety of bread, so that I can try different buns daily. They usually don't last more than 3 days, and although tedious to make, it's still fun for me. So I'm gonna continue baking buns, and making scones, and making cookies etc. 

I've also been watching a lot of Japanese vlog in Youtube, and learned some new dishes from there. Simple home cooked Japanese dishes. I started spending more money buying Japanese products to experiment at home, and so far it has been delicious! I also watched videos on Japanese recipe and recommended sauces to try. Last week my husband even helped me order some of the sauces online since I can't visit any Japanese supermarket now. I think I will continue allocating some fund money to spend in this area. I'm not looking forward to the opening of Muji so that I can go spend a small fortune there trying the sauces that was recommended by all the vloggers!

And lastly, the latest development of my instagram is, I've started to post them in Japanese. This was triggered by a Youtube's video I've been watching. His name is Aki, and he is a Japanese currently living in Malaysia. Few weeks back, he post a 10mins video in Malay after learning the language for 3 weeks! I was amazed! I've been learning Japanese for 3.5 years! Surely I should be better at it then he was in Malay! Yet he has the confidence to post a full video of him speaking in Malay and talking about his life in Malaysia! So I took started to post in Japanese, sometimes full sentences, sometimes just words in Japanese. The other trigger point could be that I've been following a lot of Japanese minimalist instagram account recently, and I noted that some of the follow request I got recently were from Japan. I thought it would be nice for them to see post in Japanese from time to time. 

So here ends summary of April 2020. May 2020 is also a Circuit Break month, and I am hoping I can continue to work from home from time to time once all these virus issues are over. I find that I enjoy work more, or at least I don't feel so shitty about going to the office 2 or 3 days a week. It gave me the recharge period that I needed from facing my colleagues on a daily basis. To be honest, I prefer to work in a quiet environment, and offices like my current ones are that conducive for me. There are just too much noise and smells and distractions. It is bearable for me now cause most people are also working from home. So frankly, I kinda enjoy the Circuit Break very much and have no problem if it was to extend forever! Hahaha. Or at least the working arrangement. I do miss going to town, shopping, and just exploring. Anyway, I've written more than I intended. So let me just end it here.